The following is a guest post by Jackie Risley, Director of Product Marketing, Data and Document Capture Products at ABBYY USA

Jackie Risley

As providers face the demands of HITECH, the Accountable Care Act and outcome-based payments, much of the healthcare IT focus has been on clinical applications. But it’s important to remember that Patient Accounting is also critical to a provider’s ability to deliver the best possible patient care. As the pressure grows to provide more services and maintain reimbursement levels, the role of Patient Accounting to keep cash flowing has never been more important.

According to a recent Paystream Advisors report, there are estimates that almost one-third of every dollar spent on healthcare is spent on administrative/back office expenses. This presents a real business case for improving efficiency as well as freeing dollars to focus on patient care and satisfaction. Automating the entry and reconciliation of EOB data can reduce days in accounts receivable (AR) and help manage costs. Despite the growing use of 835 to electronically transmit EOBs, there are still millions of pages of EOB received on paper every year.

Even a highly skilled employee can spend hours on a single lengthy EOB, but scanning EOBs and using automated data capture reduces the task to minutes. Employees quickly verify the computer results and then focus on tasks that improve patient and internal service, resolve exceptions faster and prevent delays in re-submission or secondary billing. In many cases, AR employees report higher morale and less frustration with their work, preventing turnover that can disrupt operations.

If you’re thinking about implementing automated EOB scanning and data capture, here are a few things to consider:

The technology is continuously improving. If you evaluated automated data capture in the past and thought it was too inaccurate, complicated to implement and expensive, it’s time to take another look. Data capture software offers high levels of accuracy and advanced features to extract data from virtually any EOB, and implementation times and costs have come down. And if you have an EOB capture solution that’s more than a year or two old, make sure you review the latest advances in the technology. By taking the “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” attitude to software upgrades, you may not be aware of the latest features developed by software vendors competing through innovation.

You won’t see results overnight. But it shouldn’t take forever either. EOBs are one of the most complicated documents for which data capture is commonly used, and accuracy is obviously critical. No product will magically solve all of your problems, but by working with an experienced solution provider, you should be able to plan for ROI in about a year. After that the savings continue to add up, especially if multiple departments leverage the technology to drive their paperless initiatives.

Your end users will panic. Even after you convince them that they aren’t going to lose their jobs to the technology, there will be employees who will be upset about the disruption of their routine and the loss of control. Communication, training and incentives can help to ease the stress. Be sure they understand the benefits to the department, the organization and the higher level of their job activities. Perhaps just as importantly, communicate internally to be sure the rest of the organization understands the contributions the Patient Accounting team has made to the shared mission.

You don’t have to be an expert to be successful. There are already experts out there to help you. Experienced solution providers can help you set up a scanning and capture process that isn’t a burden to your employees. They can also help you integrate with the billing/other financial systems, denials management solutions or other applications, so the data gets where it needs to be to recognize the revenue as quickly as possible. You may even decide to outsource EOB capture to a secure service provider that can manage the data capture process for you.

Healthcare modernization may be reducing the amount of paper being handled by healthcare providers, but it certainly hasn’t eliminated it. A realistic approach to investing in Patient Accounting technology supports, rather than competes with, initiatives to improve clinical care by improving cash flow to fund the patient-facing initiatives.

Jackie Risley, a 10-year veteran of B2B software product marketing and management, is responsible for developing and executing sales and marketing strategy for ABBYY USA’s data capture business unit in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. She collaborates with global and regional development teams to drive product enhancement and direction, as well as works directly with key customers and partners to establish and capitalize on opportunities for revenue growth.

The following is a guest post by Dean Wiech, managing director, Tools4ever.

Dean Wiech

It is extremely important that in emergency care settings clinicians act quickly to treat their patients. However, the login processes at hospitals and healthcare organizations can often hinder the speed at which clinicians can provide care to their patients.

Clinicians need quick access the patient’s medical history, dosages, medications, etc. to offer the proper care and every second that is lost could have been used for critically needed treatment. While all healthcare organizations need to ensure the security of their systems and applications, this can have a negative impact on the treatment of their patients and can result in time being lost because of inefficient login processes and procedures.

Something as simple as simplifying access to important systems, like patient health records, can save anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes each day, which is time gained caring for patients. By giving clinicians quick access to a patient’s health record, caregivers can make quicker decisions about what kind of treatment options and medications to pursue. Clinicians often have to check several different systems and records in multiple environments to make these decisions. With a single sign-on (SSO) solution, employees not only improve workflow, documentation and security is also improved since the software records all user activities. This also allows the healthcare organization to easily see what each employee is doing on the network.

A single sign-on solution allows clinicians to have a single set of credentials to log on to a computer or workstation. Once they log in one time, they are automatically [Read more…]

Stem cell research has afforded surgeons a laundry list of new ways to treat patients with Alzheimer’s Disease, heart disease and diabetes, as well as stroke victims, and those with serious back and neck injuries.

Sometime in the next ten years, those with broken bones may be added to that list.

That’s right. Science and technology have come together to create a 3D printer, which, with a little tweaking, may be used to regenerate bone tissue with living stem cells within the next decade.

What Are Stem Cells?
For all practical purposes, stem cells are genetic wildcards. This is what makes them so valuable in cloning research. The body uses them to repair, replenish or reproduce cells specific to its needs. Stem cells are undifferentiated, which means that they can turn into any differentiated cells that the body wishes to use them for. Mammals have two types of stem cells: embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells.

Embryonic Stem Cells
Embryonic stem cells reproduce rapidly in utero. Using embryonic stem cells, the differentiated cells that make up the fetus reproduce to express their unique genetic code. Nine months of constant reproduction yields a human being. The umbilical cord is rich with stem cells. In many countries, parents may request that the umbilical cord be preserved for the express purpose of stem cell research.

Adult Stem Cells
Adult stem cells can be found in the differentiated cells of regenerative tissues or organs. Human cells die every day, especially blood and skin cells. Adult stem cells aid in the cellular regeneration of those tissues and organs. Embryonic stem cells are no exception, but they can only be accessed in utero. Adult stem cells make it possible for us to heal after an injury, no matter how minor, and they can be accessed at any time, for any reason, immediately following birth.

Stem Cells and Cloning
Contrary to popular belief, Dolly the Sheep was not cloned using stem cells, but the process of nuclear transfer (taking the nucleus of an adult cell and implanting it in a developing egg, which has had its nucleus removed). However, a similar process would be used 16 years later to prove that stem cells could be reproduced through cloning as well.

Scientists can now take a cell from a regenerative organ and fuse it with a developing egg cell, which has had its own nucleus removed. The fused cell then acts as an embryo and produces human embryonic stem cells. Scientists are now armed with the knowledge that human cells can be replicated on demand…just as a 3D printer can replicate a virtual blueprint.

3D Printing
It’s hard to believe but 3D printing has been around for years, yet it’s still such an integral part of the corporate community that it will be awhile before the technology goes mainstream. It was only last month that Amazon.com announced the opening of its online 3D printing store. 3D printing technology is marketed chiefly to built environment professionals, like architects and engineers, who use physical replicas of three-dimensional blueprints for business proposals, among other things. It is also marketed aggressively to manufacturers of figurines, who need scaffolds to continually benchmark the efficacy of their designs.

3D Printing and Bone Replacement
Medical manufacturers have been using 3D to test surgical prototypes. However, bone reproduction via living stem cells may prove to be its most influential contribution to the medical field to date. With the technology in question, surgeons could take an image of a broken bone, reverse the values and feed the image into the computer. The computer would then use the image to create a scaffold of the missing bone matter.

The Role of Stem Cells in Bone Replacement with 3D Printing
Instead of ink, the printer uses a polymer called polylactic acid and a softer substance called alginate, in addition to adult stem cells from the patient, to construct a scaffold in the shape of the missing bone matter. The polylactic acid gives the ‘bone’ its strength. The alginate is used as cushioning for the stem cells. The piece can then be surgically implanted. Within three months, the body will have used the stem cells to replace the scaffolding with solid bone.

Bone regeneration through stem cells and 3D printing may eventually edge out painful joint replacement therapy, rods, plates and screws. It may also lead to shorter surgeries, shorter recovery, and less pain. You can read more regarding the potential for body parts to be printed at Ink Technologies.

The technology was displayed at the Royal Society’s Summer Science Exhibition in London this year.

The following is a guest post by Lynda Martel is Executive Director of Government and Enterprise Business Relations at DriveSavers Data Recovery.

In today’s world, robust risk management is a must for healthcare organizations due to the combination of electronic medical records and the challenging environment of mounting digital attacks on vital corporate assets and the regulated data they are entrusted to protect. While most corporations have a multi-layered security practice, few healthcare organizations have the internal resources to recover lost data from a computer or storage system. The only way to retrieve critical information is to send the data to a secure third party data recovery vendor.

However, a surprising majority of third party vendors do not meet best practice standards for data security. If an organization does not perform its due diligence before endgaging the services of a data recovery vendor, it runs the risk of a major data breach, which could easily cost an organization or business tens of millions of dollars.

The good news is that changes to internal policies and procedures, combined with contractual changes [Read more…]

Imagine information from your patient monitors, infusion pumps and ventilators speeding over the hospital network directly into the EMR. Consider the efficiencies and cost savings as device data auto-populates each field. Picture the satisfaction of caregivers as they abandon pens, clipboards and manual data recording—as well as the repetitive process of re-keying that information into an electronic system.

In most hospitals, the barrier to this vision is that point-of-care devices simply are not designed to share information electronically. With vendor specific interfaces and proprietary protocols, they co-exist but lack a way to communicate with IT systems or other equipment. In short, each type of medical device often speaks a language of its own.

True point-of-care interoperability for medical devices with an open interface and common communications standards to send data directly to information system vendors – is simply not available today. And while an excellent goal, achieving this in a timeframe that will satisfy hospitals seeking a solution in the near future will be difficult. Implementation of a shared data standard among competing vendors is not a simple task, and even if a standard were adopted, hospitals will be burdened with having to replace existing devices to accomplish enterprise-wide interoperability.

Medical Device Integration (MDI) is a solution that solves the hospital’s need for medical device data to be in a patient’s electronic record thus achieving many of the same goals. Important differences are that MDI is practical and available – today.

How predictive analytics can transform your facility – a guest post by David Wayne and Gus Gilbertson

Clinicians and hospital administrators are faced with numerous complex questions on a daily basis:

• What can we expect to happen if we continue to operate as we have?
• What sort of changes should we make in order to improve clinical and operational performance?
• How can we accurately measure the results of our performance improvement initiatives?

Data that is assembled, organized, and evaluated to support predictive analytics can help answer those questions and more – providing a sound and forward-thinking basis for decision making.

Data allows you to prioritize goals – and meet them

In any initiative or program, it is critical to use data to identify and prioritize goals. Predictive analytics allows you to gather information, analyze that information, predict outcomes, improve processes, and then measure results. For example, harnessing data for predictive analytics can help hospitals forecast a patient’s potential for readmissions and provide preventative treatment – thereby improving a patient’s health outlook and reducing costs.

With both clinical and business concerns in mind, clinicians and hospital administrators [Read more…]

In the wake of passage of the Affordable Care Act, the health care industry is changing so rapidly that it is sometimes hard to stay informed about how these changes may affect you. New advances in technology are changing how the health care industry functions to such a degree that new unfamiliar terminology is being introduced into mainstream culture daily.

For instance, terms like “electronic medical records” and “electronic health records” may be poorly understood to the point where they are often used interchangeably and their unique benefits are left unrecognized. Factually speaking, electronic medical records, or EMRs, and electronic health records, or EHRs, serve two separate but complementary purposes [Read more…]

“Health care reform” is a topic discussed daily across the nation. Hospital CEOs and pharmaceutical representatives are discussing it. Patients and providers are discussing it. The Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act (commonly called “Obamacare”) promises sweeping changes that will affect every aspect of the health care industry. In particular, hospital CEOs and administrators are charged with complying with new health care reform mandates while continuing to provide top-quality services. There are several ways the new health care reform laws affect hospital leadership practices.

The Importance of Health Care Administration

One of the most visible byproducts of Obamacare’s passage has been the new found need for professionals in the field of health care administration. Schools are introducing new advanced degree tracks, such as a masters degree in health care administration and management, that prepare students to ease the transition from old health care standards to the new. Graduates are finding more opportunities to put their skills to work in a hospital setting.

From Marketing to Education

Hospital CEOs and senior staff are charged with adopting a patient-centric focus aligning with the new health care act’s preventative-care focus. No longer can hospitals get away with marketing such-and-so services on a product-by-product basis. Rather, the hospitals that successfully complete the transition must showcase their dedication to ongoing patient education. The Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act promises to provide insurance access to an estimated 35 million people who currently [Read more…]

The systematic gathering and computerized recording of health-related data began in the United States about 50 years ago. By the 1970s, the pioneering work of Robert Ledley, often credited as the founder of informatics, was preparing the way for more elaborate medical projects using computers. The field now known as health informatics grew from these roots.

Heath informatics is a cross section of healthcare administration and is often defined as the intersection of healthcare, information technology and business. It involves not only the capture of medical information itself but the networks and applications that connect stakeholders and allow for the seamless sharing of information such as patient records, lab results and supply chain management data. The proliferation of computers and mobile devices is a catalyst for continuous reevaluation of how to effectively gather and share medical data to improve outcomes and lower costs.

Those rapid advances in digital technology are helping push employment growth. A 2012 study by Jobs for the Future and Burning Glass found [Read more…]

The following is a guest post provided by Quammen, a health care consulting firm.

With meaningful use incentive funds hanging in the balance, the need to get electronic health records running is bearing down on health care organizations across the country. The problem: EHRs traditionally take years to properly implement, leaving organizations with too little, too late.

In fact, various reports illustrate that the industry as a whole is still not up to full speed when it comes to the adoption of EHRs. For example, according to the latest data from HIMSS Analytics, about two-thirds of hospitals still have not yet progressed to computerized provider order entry and clinical decision support, the fifth stage on the eight stage scale.

With a unique approach, hospitals can select, configure and implement a comprehensive EHR in about six months – a process that typically takes years. Here are just a few of the practices that bring such speed to the process:

Take control of vendor selection. To do so, providers need to focus entirely on the system functionality needed to achieve pre-defined goals – without being distracted by vendor claims. To start, providers should put together a detailed product evaluation matrix that guides a team of leaders, clinicians and staff members [Read more…]